What are the outcomes you want to achieve at the gathering?

Crafting those outcomes is the first step of pre-planning. Until you know what you want to accomplish together, there’s no way to determine who needs to be in the room.

One of the challenges that surfaces (at the start-up of pre-planning) is: Who should sit at the table to pre-plan the retreat? Our counsel to non-profits is that the CEO/Executive Director is part of pre-planning for 99% of all Board retreats. As the outcomes for the retreat come into focus, it will become clear who else – besides board members – will provide value during the retreat discussions.

An additional factor to consider is your foundation’s core values, and to how you have divided roles, responsibilities and decision-making authority.

We believe that a key goal for all non-profits is a strong, collaborative working relationship between staff and Board, and that with good retreat pre-planning, design and facilitation, one consistent goal for all Board retreats to is strengthen the Board’s capacity to function as an effective team. Sometimes it is necessary for the Board to strengthen its capacities to work as a team – if this is a primary goal, staff might be invited to attend for part of the day.

Given my past experiences as a participant in multiple non-profit board retreats, I’m particularly interested in item #2 from Marta’s checklist above.

Chances are that you have a series of reports (in a mutually agreed upon format) that you have been using on a regular basis to assess your organization’s progress and guide strategic adjustments.

While there’s great value in having such reports, recycling your standard organizational reports for board retreats or other important strategic discussions as the sole source of information can hinder the level of engagement and discussion significantly.

Presenting the same data in multiple formats will not only increase the level of engagement from your participants, but can frequently open the door to new perspectives that in turn produces stronger, more accurate results.

In short, you’ll spend more time engaged in meaningful discussion during retreats when you invest in this type of planning on the front end.